07/08/94
Become A Power User !

RISC OS provides a number of shortcuts which make performing many 
tasks easier and quicker. RISC OS 3 has introduced additional new 
features which improve the situation still further. To see the 
effects to best advantage, why not try them out as you read this?

The Adjust Button                           

The Adjust button is generally used to provide some option which 
behaves like the action produced by clicking Select, but is subtly 
different in some way. Alternatively it may provide a short cut to 
a dialogue window. The one thing it should never do is exactly 
duplicate the action of Select.

Some of these facilities are provided within RISC OS, while others 
rely upon the author of an application to implement them in a 
standard manner. The action of the mouse buttons, and many other 
issues relating to the user interface, is covered in the RISC OS 
Style Guide (product code AKJ18).

* The usual method of dragging a window is use the Select button on 
the title bar. This brings the window to the front as well, which 
can sometimes disrupt a layout of windows which has taken some time 
to build up. However, if Adjust is used, the window can be dragged, 
but will retain it's position in the stack of windows.

* To move the work area of a window you may either drag the scroll 
bar, or click Select on the up/down/left/right arrows (if provided 
on that window). Clicking Adjust on one of these arrows moves in the 
opposite directions to Select, which saves having to move to the 
opposite arrow if you overshoot whilst scrolling a window.

* The idea of Adjust performing the opposite of Select also appears 
in some dialogue boxes (eg the zoom setting in !Draw). Clicking 
Select will increment a value, but clicking Adjust will decrement 
it. Again, this helps to reduce mouse movement.

* Clicking Adjust on the close box of a filer window will open the 
parent directory for the one which you closed. Some editors also 
support this - ie Adjust on the close box of an editor window will 
open the directory viewer containing the file which was being edited.

Continued next month...


Pound Signs and PC Emulators

Some users have been unable to get the £ sign under the PC Emulator. 
This is due to there not being a £ key on a US layout PC keyboard. 
You can get reprogram the # key to produce the £ by adding:

To AUTOEXEC.BAT -

@ECHO ON
PROMPT $e[35;156p
CLS
@ECHO OFF

To CONFIG.SYS -

DEVICE = ANSI.SYS


Did you know ... ?

If you drag a file/directory or application in to a RISC OS 3 !Edit 
window with the SHIFT key held down the name of the object is 
inserted. This can make building boot files much quicker! This also 
works with !SrcEdit which is supplied with Desktop C/Assembler.

Programs which were written in C (including !Edit, !Draw and !Paint) 
have keyboard shortcuts available when a dialogue box is being 
displayed. Pressing F1 reacts like clicking the first icon (icon 0), 
F2 for the second (icon 1) and so on. In addition, if a letter key is 
pressed an attempt will be made to match it against a capital letter 
in a field. Thus, using !Edit's Find window as an example you can 
repeat the last search by pressing F4 F2 F1. Similarly when a match has 
been found you could use C or F2 to Continue, R or F3 to Replace and so 
on. 

Note that this may not work where the input focus is also within the 
window.